The Prince of Wales was visibly moved to hear firsthand about the devastating effects of suicide and had to pause during a conversation with Rhian Mannings, whose husband took his own life. Rhian has since set up a bereavement charity, and Prince William’s Royal Foundation is donating \u00a31 million to set up a national suicide prevention network. The network, which will operate across the UK, will work to learn more about the causes of suicide and offer support to those affected.<\/p>\n
In an emotional conversation caught on camera, Rhian Mannings told the prince that her husband had taken his own life, five days after the couple were confronted with the death of their one-year-old son. The prince asked her how she coped and continued to raise two children. \u201cLooking back, I still don\u2019t know how we survived,\u201d Rhian said. "Unfortunately, there is still a lot of stigma surrounding suicide. Did you feel that at the time?" asked Prince William. "It surprised me quite a bit. I’ve never had any idea of \u200b\u200bsuicide before. It was on the news. Nobody wanted to talk about it," Rhian told him during a conversation in their Cardiff kitchen.<\/p>\n
Prince William asked her what she would say to her husband. "’Why didn’t you talk to me?’ I ask myself that every day. He was absolutely devastated, he constantly blamed himself,\u201d she said. "But I would just sit him down and say, ‘Why didn’t you come to me?’ Because he missed out on so much joy. And we would have been fine. I think that\u2019s the hardest part, we would have been OK.\u201d The prince seemed too upset to say anything. "Are you all right?" she asked. "I’m sorry, it’s hard to ask you the questions," William said. \u201cYou have experienced loss yourself,\u201d Rhian said. "Life can give you these terrible surprises. By talking about it and having hope, you can move on."<\/p>\n
After her own terrible loss in 2012, Rhian founded the charity 2wish to help those affected by the sudden or unexpected death of a child or young person. This charity will be one of 20 organizations that will be part of a new National Suicide Prevention Network, being launched with \u00a31 million over three years from the Royal Foundation of the Prince and Princess of Wales. The network will be chaired by Professor Ann John, an expert in suicide prevention and consultant in public health medicine in Wales. The Royal Foundation says suicide prevention is a \u201ccomplex challenge\u201d and there is no \u201cone size fits all\u201d model of support.<\/p>\n
The new network will seek to learn more about the causes of suicide, provide support that everyone can access, and encourage greater collaboration between different agencies and charities. Charities in the network include the Jac Lewis Foundation in Cardiff, which Prince William visited last month. This will create a drop-in center at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium that can provide mental health support to the local community. Another partner is James’ Place, which provides free support to men in suicide crisis in Liverpool, London, and Newcastle. Chief executive Ellen O’Donoghue said she wanted to "remove some of the barriers men face in accessing support at the time of crisis". The goal is to create a unified national response to the tragedy of suicide, providing hope and support to those who need it most.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Introduction to a Sensitive Topic The Prince of Wales was visibly moved to hear firsthand about the devastating effects of suicide and had to pause during a conversation with Rhian Mannings, whose husband took his own life. Rhian has since set up a bereavement charity, and Prince William’s Royal Foundation is donating \u00a31 million to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25035,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[138,14142,14140,1806,144,649,14143,1894,113,3614,14141,1713,13122],"class_list":{"0":"post-25034","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-cardiff","9":"tag-cardiff-university","10":"tag-charles-iii","11":"tag-grief","12":"tag-liverpool","13":"tag-london","14":"tag-millennium-stadium","15":"tag-newcastle-upon-tyne","16":"tag-social-stigma","17":"tag-suicide","18":"tag-suicide-prevention","19":"tag-talk-to-me-2007-film","20":"tag-william-prince-of-wales"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25034"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25036,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25034\/revisions\/25036"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}